•  70
    Can Determinists Act Under the Idea of Freedom?
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 42 (2): 49-64. 2023.
    Determinism which denies freedom of action is a common philosophical view. Is the action of such determinists incompatible with Kant’s claim that a rationally willed being “cannot act otherwise than under the idea of freedom” [G 4, 448]? In my paper, I examine Kant’s argument for this claim at the beginning of the Third Section of the Groundwork and argue that it amounts to the assertion that one cannot act while being aware of being guided by invalid principles. Belief in determinism does not n…Read more
  •  148
    Ética ambiental para la ciudad
    Signos Filosóficos 23 (46): 120-149. 2021.
    What does environmental ethics have to say about the urban context? Is the city an environment that has only negative value or is it possible, and in fact necessary, to develop ethical recommendations about how to design it? In this paper, I argue for the second of these disjuncts and sketch some ideas for an environmental city ethics. I try to show that the most important principle of such an ethics is procedural: anyone affected by a decision about the urban environment must have the possibili…Read more
  •  117
    Fernández on Transparency: Is the Bypass Procedure Compatible with Changes in Belief-Formation?
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 39 (1): 25-40. 2020.
    According to Fernández, we self-attribute beliefs on the basis of their grounds, “bypassing” the beliefs to be attributed. My paper argues that this procedure runs into normative and metaphysical problems if certain changes in the subject’s ways of forming beliefs occur. If the change is accidental, the problem is normative: self-attributing the resulting belief by way of Bypass cannot be justified. The metaphysical problem is that it is unclear how the procedure can reflect any change in belief…Read more
  •  193
    ¿BEL o Bypass? Dos teorías de la transparencia del autoconocimiento
    Tópicos. Revista de Filosofía 59 11-50. 2020.
    Alex Byrne and Jordi Fernández propose two different versions of a transparency theory of self-knowledge. According to Byrne, we self-attribute beliefs by an inference from what we take to be facts about the world (following a rule he calls BEL). According to Fernández, we self-attribute the belief that p on the basis of a prior mental state, a state which constitutes our grounds for the belief that p (thereby realizing a procedure he calls Bypass). In this paper, I present the two theories in o…Read more
  •  21
    Razonamiento y autoconocimiento
    Análisis Filosófico 38 (1): 33-55. 2018.
    What is the relation between reasoning and self-knowledge? According to Shoemaker, a certain kind of reasoning requires self-knowledge: we cannot rationally revise our beliefs without knowing that we have them, in part because we cannot see that there is a problem with an inconsistent set of propositions unless we are aware of believing them. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. A second account, versions of which can be found in Shoemaker and Byrne, claims that we can reason our w…Read more
  •  4
    ¿Qué relación existe entre la autoridad de la primera persona y el conocimiento de las propias acciones? Una posibilidad es que gracias al conocimiento de las razones que tenemos para actuar sabemos qué es lo que hacemos y, análogamente, gracias al conocimiento de las razones que tenemos para admitir [avow] una creencia sabemos qué es lo que creemos. Carlos Moya atribuye una teoría de este tipo a Richard Moran y la critica por ser circular. En este trabajo examino la teoría atribuida a Moran, re…Read more
  •  350
    Reasoning and Self-Knowledge
    Análisis Filosófico 38 (1): 33-55. 2018.
    What is the relation between reasoning and self-knowledge? According to Shoemaker (1988), a certain kind of reasoning requires self-knowledge: we cannot rationally revise our beliefs without knowing that we have them, in part because we cannot see that there is a problem with an inconsistent set of propositions unless we are aware of believing them. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken. A second account, versions of which can be found in Shoemaker (1988 and 2009) and Byrne (2005), c…Read more
  •  173
    Réplica a Ángeles Eraña "Dos explicaciones alternativas del cambio conceptual"
    In Eraña Ángeles & González Gisela Mateos (eds.), La cognición como proceso cultural, Unam, Centro De Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias En Ciencias Y Humanidades. pp. 91-98. 2009.
  •  194
    Explicaciones "racionalistas" de la autoridad de la primera persona
    In Labastida Jaime & Aréchiga Violeta (eds.), Identidad y diferencia. Vol. 3: La filosofía y la ciencia, Siglo Xxi and Asociación Filosófica De México. pp. 211-226. 2010.
    Conocemos la propia mente mejor que la mente de otras personas. Explicaciones racionalistas dicen que este fenómeno se debe a nuestra racionalidad: Somos capaces de ajustar nuestras creencias e intenciones racionalmente en vista de su coherencia o de nueva evidencia y tal ajuste requiere que conozcamos nuestras creencias e intenciones con la autoridad de la primera persona. Examino pasajes de McGinn, Shoemaker y Burge, criticando el argumento en tres puntos: (1) Es posible pensar racionalmente s…Read more
  •  634
    Transparency and Knowledge of One's Own Perceptions
    Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 25 65-67. 2017.
    So-called "transparency theories" of self-knowledge, inspired by a remark of Gareth Evans, claim that we can obtain knowledge of our own beliefs by directing out attention towards the world, rather than introspecting the contents of our own minds. Most recent transparency theories concentrate on the case of self-knowledge concerning belief and desires. But can a transparency account be generalised to knowledge of one's own perceptions? In a recent paper, Alex Byrne (2012) argues that we can know…Read more
  •  226
    La primera certeza de Descartes
    In Dávalos Patricia King, González Juan Carlos González & de Luna Eduardo González (eds.), Ciencias cognitivas y filosofía. Entre la cooperación y la integración, Universidad Autónoma De Queretaro and Miguel Ángel Porrúa. pp. 99-115. 2014.
    In the second Meditation, Descartes argues that, because he thinks, he must exist. What are his reasons for accepting the premise of this argument, namely that he thinks? Some commentators suggest that Descartes has a ‘logic’ argument for his premise: It is impossible to be deceived in thinking that one thinks, because being deceived is a species of thinking. In this paper, I argue that this ‘logic’ argument cannot contribute to the first certainty that supposedly stops the Cartesian doubt. Rath…Read more
  •  351
    Perspectivas modernas: Leibniz, Newton y Kant
    In Rosario Gómez, Adam Sellen & Arturo Taracena Arriola (eds.), Diálogos sobre los espacios: imaginados, percibidos y construidos, Unam. pp. 47-78. 2012.
    El capítulo introduce al debate sobre la naturaleza del espacio entre Leibniz y Clarke/Newton y a la posición que adopta Kant más tarde. En particular, se exponen los dos principales argumentos de Leibniz, basados en los Principios de Razón Suficiente e Identidad de Indiscernibles, en favor del relacionismo así como algunas respuestas de Clarke/Newton. También se presenta el argumento basado en la orientación del espacio que propuso Kant en 1768 para refutar el relacionismo de Leibniz. Se conclu…Read more
  •  350
    Henrich on Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories
    In Valerio Rohden, Ricardo R. Terra, Guido A. de Almeida & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Recht und Frieden in der Philosophie Kants, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 221-232. 2008.
    Dieter Henrich’s reconstruction of the transcendental deduction in "Identität und Objektivität" has been criticised (probably unfairly) by Guyer and others for assuming that we have a priori Cartesian certainty about our own continuing existence through time. In his later article "The Identity of the Subject in the Transcendental Deduction", Henrich addresses this criticism and proposes a new, again entirely original argument for a reconstruction. I attempt to elucidate this argument with refere…Read more
  •  432
    Autoconciencia e identidad personal
    Península. Revista Semestral Del Centro Peninsular En Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales 5 (1): 99-118. 2010.
    Las teorías lockeanas de la identidad personal afirman que una persona persiste en el tiempo si su conciencia persiste y los criterios para la persistencia de su conciencia son principalmente psicológicos. Una posible motivación para tal teoría es la idea de que “la identidad de una persona no debería ser distinta de lo que la persona misma considera que es”(Rovane 1990, 360). ¿Pero es posible que la propia identidad dependa de lo que uno mismo piensa que es? En este trabajo se investigan tres p…Read more
  •  227
    Someone who believes “I believe it will rain” can easily be mistaken about the rain. But it does not seem likely, and might even be impossible, that he is wrong about the fact that he believes that it is going to rain. How can we account for this authority about our own beliefs – the phenomenon known as first person authority? In this paper I examine a type of theory proposed, in distinct forms, by Crispin Wright and Jane Heal for an explanation of our authority. Both authors claim that our seco…Read more
  • My thesis tests a novel definition of consciousness by applying it to theories of self-consciousness. This definition attempts to distinguish the phenomenon of consciousness from those of knowledge, belief, awareness, and perception by describing it as the noticing of objects and the registering of facts in thought. My investigation of self-consciousness is phenomenological in that it leaves aside questions as to whether selves exist or what their nature is and just examines what the contents of…Read more
  •  227
    Identifying, Discriminating or Picking Out an Object: Some Distinctions Neglected in the Strawsonian Tradition
    Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 12 106-107. 2004.
    In "Individuals", Peter Strawson talks about identifying, discriminating and picking out particular objects, regarding discriminating and picking out as ways of identifying. I object that, strictly speaking, identification means to say of two things that they are the same. In contrast, discriminating an object from all others can be done by just ascribing some predicate to it that does not apply to the others. Picking out an object does not even seem to require to distinguish it from all others.…Read more
  •  437
    First Person Authority and Knowledge of One's Own Actions
    Crítica. Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 45 (134): 3-16. 2013.
    What is the relation between first person authority and knowledge of one’s own actions? On one view, it is because we know the reasons for which we act that we know what we do and, analogously, it is because we know the reasons for which we avow a belief that we know what we believe. Carlos Moya (2006) attributes some such theory to Richard Moran (2001) and criticises it on the grounds of circularity. In this paper, I examine the view attributed to Moran. I rebut the charge of circularity, but a…Read more
  •  733
    Transparency or Opacity of Mind?
    Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 22 97-99. 2014.
    Self-knowledge presents a challenge for naturalistic theories of mind. Peter Carruthers’s (2011) approach to this challenge is Rylean: He argues that we know our own propositional attitudes because we (unconsciously) interpret ourselves, just as we have to interpret others in order to know theirs’. An alternative approach, opposed by Carruthers, is to argue that we do have a special access to our own beliefs, but that this is a natural consequence of our reasoning capacity. This is the approach …Read more
  •  362
    In this paper, I reconstruct Davidson’s explanation of first person authority and criticize it in three main points: (1) The status of the theory is unclear, given that it is phenomenologically inadequate. (2) The theory explains only that part of the phenomenon of first person authority which is due to the fact that no two speakers speak exactly the same idiolect. But first person authority might be a more far-reaching phenomenon than this. (3) Davidson’s argument depends on the claim that “not…Read more
  •  925
    Rules of Language and First Person Authority
    Polish Journal of Philosophy 6 (2): 15-32. 2012.
    This paper examines theories of first person authority proposed by Dorit Bar-On (2004), Crispin Wright (1989a) and Sydney Shoemaker (1988). What all three accounts have in common is that they attempt to explain first person authority by reference to the way our language works. Bar-On claims that in our language self-ascriptions of mental states are regarded as expressive of those states; Wright says that in our language such self-ascriptions are treated as true by default; and Shoemaker suggests…Read more
  •  508
    Kant's Four Notions of Freedom
    Hekmat Va Falsafeh (Wisdom and Philosophy). Academic Journal of Philosophy Department Allameh Tabataii University 1 (2): 31-48. 2005.
    Four different notions of freedom can be distinguished in Kant's philosophy: logical freedom, practical freedom, transcendental freedom and freedom of choice ("Willkür"). The most important of these is transcendental freedom. Kant's argument for its existence depend on the claim that, necessarily, the categorical imperative is the highest principle of reason. My paper examines how this claim can be made plausible.
  •  469
    Autoconocimiento y la psicología experimental
    Ludus Vitalis 19 (36): 281-285. 2011.
    En este pequeño texto, resumo brevemente tres experimentos psicológicos que Peter Carruthers (2010) cita como evidencia para la tesis según la cual no tenemos un acceso introspectivo y exclusivo de la primera persona a nuestras actitudes proposicionales, sino sólo uno interpretativo. Si Carruthers tiene razón, sólo conocemos nuestras creencias, intenciones y otras actitudes a través de un proceso inconsciente de interpretación de nuestro propio comportamiento y, por ende, de la misma manera en q…Read more
  •  439
    Evans and First Person Authority
    Abstracta 5 (1): 3-15. 2009.
    In The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans describes the acquisition of beliefs about one’s beliefs in the following way: ‘I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p.’ In this paper I argue that Evans’s remark can be used to explain first person authority if it is supplemented with the following consideration: Holding on to the content of a belief and ‘prefixing’ it with ‘I b…Read more